Chronic wasting disease is a horrible condition. Over the course of an agonizing year or two, it attacks the brains of infected deer, elk and moose, inexorably weakening the animals until it finally kills them. The symptoms of CWD were first recognized in Colorado in 1967; it has now been documented in 30 states, and is especially prevalent in the Rocky Mountain West. Despite decades of research on CWD and related diseases, scientists have yet to understand exactly how it spreads, much less develop a treatment or a cure.
Now, as HCN contributor Christine Peterson writes in this issue, researchers are wondering whether restored populations of predators — mountain lions, bears or wolves — would kill more infected animals than healthy ones, and by doing so help contain the disease and its cruel effects. The hypothesis is far from proven, but it’s a new approach to a problem that, so far, has resisted conventional tools.
This issue is rich in stories about innovation born of adversity: In Butte, Montana, ecologists are using detailed weather data and their knowledge of bird behavior to protect migrating flocks from the dangerously acidic waters of the Berkeley Pit. Westerners in need of abortion care are turning to telehealth and other at-home alternatives to overcome new restrictions. And despite the gas industry’s determination to fight new climate-friendly building codes, Westerners are electrifying their homes, vehicles and communities more quickly than ever.
Then there are innovators like the artist Lezley Saar, a multimedia artist who uses found objects to summon soothsayers, shamans and healers from her imagination. The resulting series of haunting tableaux speaks to both public and private tragedies; essayist Charlotte Watson Sherman describes Saar’s faceless, limbless sculptures as “curers of maladies, as death doulas — as conjuring go-betweens I gaze upon for solace.”
With such visions and inventions, we find our path forward.
We welcome reader letters. Michelle Nijhuis is acting editor-in-chief at High Country News. Email her at michelle@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Tools for the future.
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